I spent part of a year spending time with refugees in the Broadmeadows Detention Centre in Australia. It was the pretty one. The one government would let people see. Nevertheless, trust me, a cage is a cage is a cage. I remember sitting with one woman whose child had serious heart problems, and on the day he had a high fever. No one was even bringing him an aspirin, much less proper medical help. She held him cuddled in her arms, fearful that he was about to die. The commercial company that was running the place put their principles on the wall by their front desk. It read like something straight out of Robocop.

I gathered lots of stories at the time. None that I could use, because I discovered that the government could easily find out who blabbed, then deport them back to their country where in many cases the likelihood was high that they would be killed by their government. In the meantime other people were writing fictional works for stage that showed their research only went as deep as news articles by corporate owned media, then relied heavily on stereotypes in order to portray the detainees. They were well meaning, but unhelpful. I wrote a play about elephants, because their circumstances in the wild were similar to those of the people I met in detention. I hoped it would make people more sensitive to the issues when they heard about refugees.

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I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped

"Thirty of us shared one room. We were given one Styrofoam cup for water and one plastic spoon that we had to reuse for every meal. I eventually had to start trying to eat and, sure enough, I got sick. None of the uniforms fit, and everyone had men’s shoes on. The towels they gave us to shower were hand towels. They wouldn’t give us more blankets. The fluorescent lights shined on us 24/7.

"Everything felt like it was meant to break you. Nothing was explained to us. I wasn’t given a phone call. We were locked in a room, no daylight, with no idea when we would get out."